Each summer, NASCAR roars back into Northeastern Pennsylvania. Let’s take a look back at some history from Pocono Raceway.

On August 4, 1974, NASCAR traveled to Pocono Raceway for the first time.

As the nation kept its eyes fixed on the Watergate scandal consuming the administration of President Richard Nixon (he resigned four days later), 45,000 racing fans in northeastern Pennsylvania had the chance to see racing legends like Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison, and others battle it out on the 2.5 mile “Tricky Triangle.”

Rain shortened the 500 mile race at the Long Pond track. The race came to its conclusion with Petty in the lead after 192 laps, claiming just over $14,000 in prize money.

It wasn’t Petty’s first time on the famous three-turned circuit. Petty had one won once before on the track. Petty ran in a stock car event sanctioned by USAC in 1972 and 1973, winning the 1973 race before NASCAR headed north to Pennsylvania for the first time in 1974.

Joe Miegoc, the sports columnist for the Pocono Record newspaper in East Stroudsburg, interviewed Petty and tells the story around the race.

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The only thing that stands between three victories in as many stock car appearances at Pocono International Raceway for Richard Petty is a blown tire in 1972. Otherwise, he has been as dominant at Pocono as Wilt Chamberlain would be dunking the ball over a midget.

Petty, who has won more races than you can think of obviously likes Pocono. But he likes it because of the attention a driver has to give the track while he is driving it.

“I think the car and driver combination is more important running a race like Pocono than it is to run a place like Daytona,” said Petty Sunday, “where if you’ve got a fast car, then anyone of 10 or 15 people can drive it fast around that wide-open high-banked track.”

“If you lose a little down the straightaways here,” he explained, if you’ve got a good-handling car, then you can make it back up in the corners.”

Petty should know about picking up time. He completely ran away from the field in the 1973 Acme 500 after briefly dueling with Butch Hartman and Sunday won by nearly 20 seconds over Buddy Baker to capture the first Purolator 500 for NASCAR Grand National drivers.

Petty has won more than 160 races in a career which began in 1958.

Now 37, Petty has never driven an Indianapolis-type car and doesn’t plan to. With his success, why should he risk it all? The man is as homey and down-to-earth friendly as Southern people are said to be. You ask a question, you get a full answer.

There were many questions asked Sunday following the race and Petty remained in the press room for nearly an hour to answer every question. One question had to do with Petty’s reaction when his car slipped off a jack during two pit stops for tires.

Petty gave his usual complete answer: “We had one fall off on the left side and one fall off on the right. But it was all under caution and I wasn’t worried because those boys could pick the car up if they really had to bear down on it.”

The Randleman, N.C., resident is an interviewer’s dream. He gives unselfishly of himself to everyone. If he has the time, fine, but if he doesn’t, he’ll find it.

He is the “King of Stock Car Racing” and rightly so. If anyone ever lived who had done more for the stock cars, he had to work pretty hard at it to eclipse Petty. It rained during the race and actually posed a serious threat to the continuance of the event after just 126 laps. After the race, every driver seemed to pick up and Petty was asked why.

“Well, we all picked up after the rain,” he said.

“We all ran below what we qualified at. In fact, we ran some in the 61-second bracket (about 145 miles-per-hour). So we picked up a couple of miles an hour. The deal was there that we had run 140 or 150 laps and we got used to the track and used to the car and when it rained, it just gave us a brand new race track. We could stick high or low or anything.”

“If you made a little slip, you could go into the next corner and make it up. That was the reason we were running so fast.”

Petty was so far ahead when the race was flagged due to a second rain after 192 laps that he seemingly could have stopped for an ice cream cone and still had time to finish the cone and get back out without losing the lead. He ran that well and didn’t slow down once he was far ahead.

“Well, I did ease up a bit in the corners over the last parts of the race,” he explained, “but I felt that if we were running that way for most of the race the only way to do it was to keep running that way.”

Don’t get the idea it was a rout. Petty first raced Baker for about 15 laps, with Baker leading down the home straight and then Petty taking control again in the tunnel turn.

Then Petty raced Bobby Allison’s Matador, a Roger Penske car which Allison was driving for only the third time.

So those who were at Pocono Sunday, and the crowd was estimated at about 45,000 were not disappointed. They came to see the NASCAR drivers run and they came to see Richard Petty win. They went home satisfied on both counts.

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